Posted
by
CowboyNealon Saturday November 04, 2006 @11:08AM
from the hotel-americana dept.

jo7hs2 writes "The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has proposed a system which will in essence make it mandatory for you to have permission before leaving or entering the country, effectively putting everyone on a no-fly list unless the government says otherwise. Interestingly, the proposal does not seem to cover personal travel, only that on some sort of carrier like an airline or cruise vessel. While this certainly is concerning, it isn't exactly new, as a passport is already required for circumstances covered under the proposal."

As someone whose parents had to cross the Jugoslav border to Italy in the trunk of an old Fiat because the Polish government wouldn't grant them a passport to leave the communist bloc, I resent this and find it disgusting. If someone's accused of charges that they can fight in a civilian court, then I can understand temporarily taking their passport away. But a civilian court offers the accused a clear means to fight the charges.

Military tribunals and secret decision-making like this are horrible ideas because there's no accountability involved. But what about hard-core terrorists like Osama, those responsible for WTC I and WTC II among other things? If anything, this applies more. I want to see the bastards on trial in a New York courtroom, in public, accountable to the very populace whom they injured and whose families they murdered. Then, since New York has no death penalty, a nice long term in Sing Sing in the same cellblock with the Aryan Brotherhood. Justice doesn't have to be meted out by military courts to be tough or fair.

When I submitted this article, it was intended to provoke discussion and see if it could be verified. It ran on Fark.com yesterday, but I didn't feel it prudent to rely on the research skills of the average Farker to confirm or deny the assertions of the article.
Personally, I think it probably IS fud.

I think you're right. It's hard on any narrowly-defined topic to differentiate between being left and simply disagreeing with the majority of Bush's policies. I think that a large majority of "geeks" - the people who actually visit/. - can agree that stem cell research is good, implying that a multi-year war will last six months is bad, etc, etc.

With the narrow scope that most of these articles have, it becomes even harder to discern someone's full political views. The fiscal conservatives don't get a voice because there are very few economic stories on/. You don't even hear much from social conservatives - once again because you hear very little on this geeksite about those types of stories.

What you get most of are tech stories - which are mostly related to war, security, and civil liberties. Even if you agree with Bush on fiscal and social issues - if you're anti-war, you - and the site- will get branded as a lefty.

The primary purpose of this proposed rule is to prevent passengers that have beenidentified as high-risk on government watchlists from boarding aircraft bound for ordeparting from the United States

I think the problem is that getting onto one of these "watchlists" is not particularly hard. Who decides who gets on the list? If you are on such a list, would you know it? Would you have any opportunity to challenge your presence on the list? How hard would it be to declare someone on such a list to be an "unlawful enemy combatant," and thus make them eligible for torture, a military court trial, etc.?

I am not sure how we are going to repeal all of these laws once the current administration is out of power. It's going to be nearly impossible.

And you propose to have women prove that they used a contraceptive how? I don't think that state sponsered CCTV cameras in everyone's bedroom would go over too well. (although... if you've got nothing to hide...)

Without some way to prove/disprove the contraceptive use, you've effectively set up a meaningless system where anyone that's willing to lie under oath (in a lie that they can't be caught at) will be able to get an abortion.

Now, for a solution that makes noone happy, but might actually work. Let the anti-abortionites sign up for an "I'm willing to adopt list". If a woman goes for an abortion, and there's a name on that list, then she carriest he baby to term and the name on the list gets the kid and is taken off. If there isn't a name on that list, then, well, the public obviously doesn't care enough, and the abortion is allowed to happen.

The best part is that it makes absolutely noone happy, so it must be a good compromise!:)

Who says we wouldn't be in the same or a worse mess if Gore was elected? The groundwork for our current mess was laid under previous presidents.

As far as voting Libertarian, if everyone feels that way about a less-known but optimal candidate or party, then we're bound to get stuck with suboptimal representatives! Ultimately, the solution to this problem is election reform. Give each voter more than one vote in a given election, allow them to rank candidates in order of preference, or go with approval voting. With approval voting, voters can say that the either "approve" "disapprove" or "abstain" on a given candidate. Then points are assigned to each rating. Approved is +1 point, abstention counts for 0, and disapproval counts for -1. In the end, the candidate with the most points wins (or maybe there can be a runoff if there isn't a clear margin of victory).

Approval voting avoids the problem of the wasted vote - voters can vote for *both* Gore and the Libertarian (say) and not run into the problem of wasting their single votes.